We are excited to announce this year’s Pro Bono Award Winners!
ELAP’s annual Pro Bono Awards recognize outstanding volunteer contributions to our community’s legal needs. Our winners include attorneys, firms, judges, community partners, and individual justice champions.
Community Advocate of the Year: Steven Ortega
ELAP’s housing attorneys meet regularly with attorneys from other organizations to discuss emerging trends and unique cases. We first met Steven through these meetings when he was an Equal Justice Works Fellow with the Tenant Law Center. He currently works at Northwest Justice Project as a staff attorney, where he provides invaluable services to our community members. Steven specializes in subsidized housing issues, which require a deep knowledge of local and federal policies. He never hesitates to provide guidance to other housing attorneys when they are tackling difficult legal issues. A bonus is that he brings a wonderful sense of humor to our meetings, which is important in such a tough line of work.
Public Service: Amanda Judd
Amanda is a Human Services Coordinator with the City of Kirkland, one of ELAP’s key funding partners. She is dependable, responsive, and makes complex processes easier by offering clear guidance. Amanda goes far beyond administering a contract: during a severe winter freeze she stayed late to work with our staff to help Kirkland residents secure shelter vouchers to keep them safe during the storm. Amanda understands that behind every contract are people, and she meets ELAP’s team with warmth, flexibility, and care. She consistently shows up for our work. Her partnership is a model of what collaborative public service can look like.
Pro Bono Attorneys of the Year: Jeng-Ya (Jen) Chen, Maria Williams and Stanislav Natzev
Jeng-Ya, Maria, and Stanislav are pro bono attorneys whom ELAP has depended on this year to serve community members in our immigration clinic. With compassion and grace, they have supported immigrant clients during a time of tremendous upheaval, uncertainty, and fear. They use their legal expertise to explain complex immigration matters, filling a high need during a time when immigration legal services have been stretched thin. These outstanding volunteers have always stepped up to offer additional support when asked. We simply could not have run this clinic without their dedication.
Lifetime Achievement: Judge Michael Finkle
We are honored to present Judge Finkle with our 2026 Lifetime Achievement Award, honoring his career of public service and lasting commitment to justice. Judge Finkle helped create and support therapeutic courts, including mental health, veterans, and youth courts. He has served on statewide committees addressing mental health, domestic violence, judicial well-being, mentorship, and court access. Through teaching, mentoring future attorneys, and countless volunteer and community contributions, he has helped shape Washington’s justice system for the better. ELAP is also grateful for his decades of support of our organization, most recently for the pilot Small Claims Clinic, which helped reach community members who might otherwise have had nowhere to turn.
